Ghost Stories
by Sakon76
Summary: [2007 Movieverse] Everything can change in an instant. But you never, ever give up. The story of a boy and his car. Or a robot and his ghost.
1. Ghost in the Machine

**Ghost in the Machine**  
by K.Stonham  
released 15th October 2007

It was over in an instant.

Sam was the best ground scout they had, fast and silent and with the all-important knowledge of Cybertronian technology that years upon years of working, _living_, with the Autobots had brought him. Next to Ratchet and Mikaela, Sam had the best understanding of how Cybertronian bodies, mechanics, sciences, and physics worked of anyone Bumblebee knew. Certainly better than his own, but then Sam had actively _studied_ what Bumblebee had always known more or less intuitively. With the addition, nearly a year before, of the chip in his head that Sam, Mikaela, and Ratchet had designed and built, Sam was the absolute perfect liaison between the Autobots and their human allies, literally able to hear and understand Cybertronian, and respond in it as well.

The chip had had a few extras built in. Except when Sam was actively using it to transmit, it was utterly invisible to scans. Even Ratchet, with his incredibly delicately calibrated sensors, couldn't detect it, and he'd been the one to install it. It also had a masking field that erased Sam's heat signature on any infrared sensors, and a modified version of a basic Cybertronian force shield.

So while the rest of them were trying to take down Shockwave, Sam, unarmored and unarmed to make the best use of his effective invisibility, was sneaking around behind the Decepticon toward the bomb he'd constructed. If it was detonated... Bumblebee shuddered to think of the consequences. It would destroy any Cybertronians within a hundred-mile radius, to say nothing of more frail human bodies. It would, in fact, probably kill every living thing on the North American continent, and the radiation fallout would, in a matter of days, finish off every other living creature on the planet.

It was a planet-killer bomb.

It was so perfectly Shockwave.

He never knew what alerted Shockwave to Sam's presence. He just knew that Shockwave stood still for a second, then turned and looked at the comparatively tiny human who had almost reached the contraption.

"Insect," the Decepticon pronounced, and fired a full-force percussive energy blast at Sam. The chip's shield never stood a chance, and neither did Sam.

He was vaporized in a single instant.

There was a moment of shock before realization set in and Bumblebee screamed, nearly frying his vocal processor again as he renewed his attack on Shockwave, pulse blast after pulse blast winging free of his arm cannons. And, distantly, he knew that he wasn't the only one with the same reaction; Lennox was screaming too, Epps yelling curses at the top of his lungs, imprecations matched in Cybertronian by Ironhide.

Sam might have been Bumblebee's best friend, but, tagged with the nickname "the kid," he was a part of all of them, the best one to stand between Autobot and human and interpret, bridging the gap between two peoples and two cultures. But now he was gone.

Shockwave's shield, though, was older and stronger and powered by a greater force than Sam's bioelectric field which had, after all, only been human. "A valiant effort," the Pit-spawned drone pronounced. "Nonetheless, a failure. Punishment shall be meted out." And Bumblebee _felt_ the signal pulse Shockwave sent to the bomb, and screamed denial even louder.

The bomb failed to detonate.

"What?" Shockwave asked, half-turning toward his creation, sounding disbelieving.

Bumblebee _knew_ what Sam would say, could practically hear it running through his audials: "Nice try, Decepticon. I don't think so."

"This is not possible," Shockwave said. "The schematics were perfect, the construction impeccable."

"Yeah, well, humans throw monkey wrenches into Decepticon plots," Bumblebee's inner Sam replied, unheard.

"No one could have--" Shockwave said, ignoring the continued metal and plasma fire bursting against his shield.

"Excuse me, _I_--" mental-Sam interrupted, irritated, then paused. "Oh." And the voice went very quiet for a second. "Shit."

"This is not possible," Shockwave said again, taking a step toward his bomb. "I must examine--" And then he froze mid-step.

"I don't think so," mental-Sam said, voice very quiet and dangerous. "I'm taking your shields down, fucker."

"Sam...?" Ironhide questioned incredulously, lowering one cannon for just a second as he studied the frozen Shockwave.

Bumblebee's optics widened. "You hear him too?" he asked.

"That makes three of us," Optimus said, his own tone disbelieving.

"Aha," Sam's disembodied voice said, laden with grim triumph. "Got 'em. Guys... slag this sucker."

"His shields are down," Bumblebee told Lennox and his men. "Don't know for how long."

"Then let's take advantage!" Epps whooped.

"Concentrate fire below the spark chamber!" Lennox commanded, and as they all opened fire on the frozen Decepticon, Bumblebee could only hope that his processors hadn't truly taken leave of his logic circuits...

* * *

Shockwave was, indeed, a mostly melted pile of slag by the time they were satisfied he was dead. After hundreds of thousands of years of failed attempts to destroy the Decepticon psychopath, none of the Autobots wanted to be less than perfectly sure of his end. 

Of Sam, there was no trace.

The triumph and the shock were melded into one, which didn't explain why Shockwave's bomb hadn't worked, or why his motor functions and force field had both failed at the critical moment.

At least, not until a bright spark of energy detached itself from Shockwave's cooling corpse just as Ratchet finally arrived. Bumblebee cupped his hands as the energy pulse wandered unsteadily over to them, like a bit of milkweed fluff on the wind, or Sam wobbling after he'd overextended himself. "Sam?" he asked cautiously, aware of the other Autobots gathering around him to stare at the pulse.

"Didn't even realize he'd got me until the bomb failed to go off," Sam's... ghost mumbled. "At least I got that done..."

"What're you guys looking at?" Epps asked, looking up. Bumblebee knelt, opening his hands just enough to show the shining spark there, but the humans didn't seem to see anything, judging from their uncomprehending expressions.

"Their optics don't see in the full spectrum ours do," Ratchet had to remind him.

"Sam's spirit," Optimus said for the humans' edification. "He defused the bomb and held Shockwave long enough for us to terminate him."

Lennox and Epps and their men stared at the empty-to-them space in Bumblebee's hands. "Holy Mary, mother of Jesus," someone said.

"Twenty-one grams," Lennox murmured.

The spark was starting to flare fitfully. "I think I have to go," Sam's voice murmured inside Bumblebee's audials again. "Can't stay--tell Mickey and my parents and Miles--"

"No," Bumblebee denied, shaking his head. "Stay. You have to stay."

"Spirits aren't meant to stay without a body to contain them," Ironhide said with unexpected gentleness, laying a hand on Bumblebee's shoulder. "Sparks return to the Matrix, you know that, Bumblebee..."

"See?" Sam asked, fading. "Gotta go, Bumblebee... it was great, all of it. Thank you for everything..."

"Stay," Bumblebee asked one more time, his vocal processor starting to choke up. "Stay with me."

Sam sounded shocked. "What the--" he demanded, and then the spark flared white and Bumblebee fell offline.

* * *

"Bumblebee?" someone asked through a dark haze, and it was Ratchet shaking his shoulder but Sam's voice asking the question. 

Blinking his optics, Bumblebee slowly came back online, automatically running a diagnostic. Systems seemed normal, he thought; why had he gone offline like that?

He caught sight of his hands and for an instant didn't understand why they seemed so empty.

"Sam," he whispered.

"He's gone, Bumblebee," Ratchet told him softly. "I'm sorry."

"What the hell did you do?!" a different voice in Bumblebee's head disagreed, making Bumblebee's optics widen and causing the three other Cybertronians to freeze in their tracks and stare at him.

"Sam...?" Bumblebee asked slowly, his spark already starting to sing in certainty. His friend wasn't dead like so many others, wasn't gone, was _here_ with him...

"Did you _not_ watch those movies with me over the last eight Halloweens?" Sam demanded. "Dead people are supposed to stay dead, move on, whatever. Hauntings are not a good idea, Bumblebee!"

"Well," Ironhide remarked, "it seems his temper's intact, if nothing else."

"What are you talking about?" Lennox asked from where he was supervising Shockwave's remains being loaded onto a transport truck.

"Hey, cool, you have an internal holomatter projector?" Sam asked, and Bumblebee could feel him examining that subroutine. "I didn't know you had one. Why didn't you ever use it?"

"Holograms are dishonest," Bumblebee retorted. "Do I look like a Decepticon to you?" He glared at Ratchet when the medic snorted in amusement at the argument.

"Can I use it?" Sam asked. "I want to try something."

"...What?" Bumblebee asked, having learned to be wary of granting Sam's requests out of hand. He ignored the crowd of gathering humans who were looking speculatively up at him.

"Go car form," Sam requested. Not seeing any potential harm to either of them in the action, Bumblebee shrugged and folded himself into his alternate configuration. He felt the rarely-used projector hum to life, and blinked his sensors in mild surprise as a perfect hologram of Sam himself appeared in the driver's seat.

"...Sam?" Lennox asked cautiously, approaching slowly.

Sam grinned at him. "In the... um, not-flesh," he said. He opened the driver's door and stepped out, but the image fritzed out as soon as he left the vehicle's interior.

"_Internal_ holomatter projector," Bumblebee reminded him as the ghost reappeared in the driver's seat.

"Great," Sam muttered. "Can't you, like, get Ratchet to upgrade you or something?" he asked.

Ratchet snorted at the request. "Ask Wheeljack, if he ever shows up," he directed. "He's the one who built Hound's external projector. It's not my field."

"Hmm." Sam pondered that for a minute, holomatter hands on Bumblebee's steering wheel, then released the projection and darted out the open door, a spark of energy visible only to Cybertronian sensors.

"Whoa," Lennox said, shivering suddenly, as the energy pulse brushed close by him. "Sam?"

"Sam," Optimus confirmed, watching.

"Man, this is some spooky shit," Epps said. "First giant alien robots, now ghosts. What's next? My life can't get too much weirder."

Sam returned to Bumblebee's front seat, reactivating the projector and reforming. "I think we can make this work," he said speculatively.

"Your parents," Lennox said, leaning one arm on Bumblebee's roof and looking in at Sam through the open door, "are going to be so pissed."

"Yeah, well, at least they're not dead from that bomb," Sam smarted back. "They'll deal." He looked away, back through the windshield. "Probably a good thing Mikaela and I broke up, though..." he muttered.

"Yeah, probably," Epps agreed. He looked at Bumblebee, then back at the hologram of Sam. "You two going to be okay with this?" he asked, voice serious.

"I'm not the one who invited a dead guy to haunt him," Sam said. "Bumblebee?"

It had been too soon. If it had been a vorn, an entire human lifetime, it would still have been too soon for him to easily let go of Sam. But since he'd had a chance... "If you'll have me," Bumblebee said silently, so that the humans wouldn't hear, "then stay. Please."

Sam's eyes widened and his thumb stroked reflexively over the Autobot symbol on the center of Bumblebee's steering wheel. "You sure about this, Bumblebee?" he asked the same way.

"Yes," Bumblebee said, then spoke aloud. "This way... I don't have to lose my best friend." And he hadn't known it was possible for holoforms to blush, but apparently Sam's mastery of the projector was already better than his had ever been.

"Yeah, well, be sure you remember that in a century when you've figured out I'm really the annoying roommate from Hell you're stuck with for the rest of your life," Sam jibed. He looked up at Lennox and Epps, smile on his face. "I think we'll be okay," he said.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_This story was a reaction after I read generalcordovan and OKami-hu's story "Twisted" (warning: dark, very dark, and not at all for the squeamish) and couldn't stop thinking about it. While I was subsequently in the shower scrubbing my head, this story popped into it. My head, not my shower. Though given that said head was in the shower at the time, that point is debatable. Anyhow, then it gave itself a title, and when things give themselves titles, you're generally doomed. So, following the end of the shower, I sat down and typed this out in about an hour._


	2. Poltergeist

  
**Poltergeist**  
by K.Stonham  
released 15th October 2007 

In some ways, things hadn't changed very much at all between the situation of Sam being "his human" and being "his ghost." They still spent all their time together and got into long, involved discussions about Earth and Cybertron and all the other planets Bumblebee had seen. They had arguments about music that inevitably dragged in insults in a variety of languages about each other and their creators. Sam still "drove" wherever they went, and their absolute favorite place to be was in one another's company, with any insults or slights anyone else levered at either of them avenged through meticulously co-planned pranks.

In some ways, though, everything was utterly different. There was no more steadily beating human heart to lull Bumblebee into recharge, no comfortable weight on his hood as they both caught some sun; Sam's touch was instead a whispering of energy along his circuits and sensors, a constant, eerie presence. Neither of them was sure how much they saw into each other, so they worked hard to ensure each other some modicum of privacy. And while Bumblebee didn't mind remaining in car form so that Sam could use his holomatter projector to interact with his friends and family, it hurt a little the way they acted sometimes around Sam, like the fact that he was a different form of life now changed who he was and had been to them.

On the other hand, there was always the training.

Whether it was the fact that the Autobots had seen more planets and myriad forms of life than the human race, or were in the end just more practical, Bumblebee didn't know, but his brothers-in-arms had far fewer problems than the humans in accepting Sam's changed state. It hadn't even been an orn after Shockwave's demise before Prime, Ratchet, and Ironhide between them had devised a testing and training regimen to figure out the extent of Sam's new skills.

"Can't overlook a possible advantage," Ironhide had said, almost apologetically.

Sam had given the equivalent of a shrug. "This is war," he replied. "So, what're we in for?"

Ratchet had only smiled and steepled his hands before his face. "In the word of your people... Hell."

* * *

Sam didn't know where he disappeared to when he "slept." Bumblebee said that he was still there, that he felt a little like a daemon, an undisturbed program running in the background of his processors... but not really. Unfortunately, that didn't help Sam any, and it definitely didn't help him get any kind of control over how long he was out. 

Full-body possession was draining with anyone other than Bumblebee, though willingness alleviated that a little. Going too far away from Bumblebee left him feeling cold, and if he pushed it too far, like pieces of himself were being sheared away. But he _could_ work with it, stopping critical electrical impulses, jamming up a Decepticon's sensors and transformation cogs and motor functions. And the converse was true, too; he could unblock damaged nerve pathways in injured Autobots, guide someone whose sensors were out, and repair damage, a concentration of effort popping out dents in armor and reforging cracked bolts into pieces as solid as if they were newly forged. He could even act as a sort of shield and give an energy boost to someone whose systems really needed it.

None of which quite made up for the times he got really mad, lost it telekinetically, and woke up months later to find that Mojo had died, Mikaela had gotten engaged, and a whole new contingent of Autobots had arrived while he slept.

"Bumblebee?" he whispered confusedly on waking again, because the last he remembered, it had been the middle of the night in an Oregon forest, and now they were racing midday through desert heat.

"Sam?" Bumblebee didn't screech to a halt in surprise, but he definitely fishtailed across a few lanes before recovering, one of the other Autobots snapping at him to watch his driving. Sam slipped into his interior, activating the holomatter projector, reforming in the warm sunshine. He thought he understood better now Bumblebee's love of Earth's sunlight, because he felt cold, so cold, and the heat was a blessing as it soaked through his borrowed form...

The glove box popped open as a country song crooned mindlessly on the radio. Sam reached wearily across, dragging out the blanket his mother and Mikaela had made for him, halfway for comfort, halfway for sanity. He stroked his fingers across the squares of fabric, denim and calico, silk and velvet, wool and corduroy. Touch was a human thing, something to do with human delicacy and having to be so attuned to their environment. The Autobots could _feel_, of course, pressure and vibration like human senses, but nothing so exquisitely accurate as human touch. Bumblebee wouldn't be able to tell the tactile difference between satin and burlap to save his life. Sam could, and as he moved his fingers across the patchwork, recalibrating holomatter sensors, sensation and warmth came slowly back into him until he felt almost all right again.

He took a shuddering breath out of habit rather than need. "Thanks," he said quietly, meaning the space Bumblebee had given him.

"No problem," his partner replied. "You're okay now?" Bumblebee's voice was uncertain. Sam wondered if Bumblebee was still disquieted that he couldn't just run a scan on a ghost to confirm that Sam was "systems normal."

"Better," Sam replied, still holding the blanket. "What happened?"

"You almost took out Starscream," Bumblebee told him.

"'Almost'?" Sam asked, raising an eyebrow. Outside, the world sped past them, a blur of browns and tans, shadowy blue mountains in the distance like paintings. Bumblebee's engine hummed, the raw power of a finely tuned Camaro hiding the strength and agility of a Cybertronian warrior as wheels sped over pavement. Sam had loved his Camaro from the first moment he'd sat in its driver's seat, before he knew who and what it was. The car had indeed chosen its driver, and in a suspended space like this, a bubble, a moment between two worlds, he knew instinctively that he would never love his car/guardian/friend/partner any less than he had that first moment. The infatuation, the enchantment, had been tested, and held fast.

"Skywarp teleported him out at the last minute," Bumblebee reported. "We haven't seen him since, though, so you really did him some damage."

"How long?" Sam asked the question he'd been dreading.

Bumblebee was silent for a moment then answered quietly, "Six months."

Sam sighed unhappily, breath hissing out between his teeth as he closed his eyes, hand fisting in the blanket. He _understood_ now what Bumblebee had gone through with him for eight years. He was going to continue on like this for a very long time, damn near forever as humans reckoned things, and his friends and family... weren't. Every time he drained himself too far in battle and fell asleep, time jumped ahead and they aged while he didn't. Time was a thief, and it was stealing everyone he loved. Everyone except the Autobots.

He _really_ hated the Decepticons and their stupid war that kept doing this to him.

"So." He forced himself to be conversational. "What'd I miss? Who're these guys?" he asked, looking around at the convoy of conspicuously--if you were bothering to look--driverless vehicles.

"Not much. Mikaela postponed her wedding until you could attend."

"'Bee, I _can't_, it's inside a church--"

"Check the holomatter projector's specs," Bumblebee told him.

Sam did, and blinked in shock. "What the...?"

"Wheeljack arrived while you were sleeping," his car told him smugly. "I asked him to upgrade my system. You can use it for external holograms now."

"It's not line of sight restricted?" Sam asked, continuing to work his way through the new system, mapping out the circuitry.

"Nope."

"'Bee." He sat up straighter, touched. "I... Thank you."

"Thank Wheeljack. He wanted to come with, but Ratchet has him working on some upgrades to the base's weaponry."

"So who're the rest of these guys, then?" Sam asked, looking around. Two sports cars--Lamborghinis unless he missed his guess--raced in front of them, with a white-striped red Mini Cooper and a forest green Hummer keeping ranks behind them.

"The Lamborghinis are the twins. You've heard us talk about them, right?"

"Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, right?"

"Sides is the red one, Sunny's the yellow. Perceptor's the Mini, and the Hummer is Springer. He's a Triple-Changer," Bumblebee added with a note of envy in his voice.

"Really?" Sam tilted his head to catch the Hummer's reflection in the side mirror again. "What's his other mode?"

"Helicopter."

"That I've got to see sometime." A faded highway sign, probably declaring them to be approaching the Middle of Nowhere, America, swooshed past too fast to read. The highway shimmered ahead of them and behind. "Where are we going, anyway?"

"Hoover Dam. We're a few hours out." A note of mischief crept into Bumblebee's voice. "If you wanted, you could use the new projector and introduce yourself to the others."

Sam stared at the steering wheel for a moment, then grinned, patting it fondly. "'Bee, you are a mech after my own heart."

* * *

Forewarned, Bumblebee cut speed slightly, forcing the two behind him to do likewise, just before Sam disappeared from his interior and reappeared in Sideswipe's. The red Autobot slammed on his brakes, skidding back and forth across the fortunately empty highway for a minute before recovering, though his imprecations of shock took several more minutes to die down. 

"Hi, I'm Sam," Bumblebee's ghost introduced himself. "You're Sideswipe, right? Sweet alt mode. It's a Murcielago, am I right?"

"You so planned that," Springer accused Bumblebee.

"Of course I did," Bumblebee replied. "Sideswipe doesn't _believe_ in ghosts, remember?"

"He does now," Springer observed with half a laugh.

"Your spectre has recovered from his period of recharge?" Perceptor asked with considerable interest. "I look forward to making his acquaintance. Prime's and Ratchet's accounts have been quite fascinating to study."

"We've got hours to go before we hit Vegas," Bumblebee laughed. "I don't think you'll have any problem with getting to meet him, Perceptor." His systems thrummed with contentment. "He's going to be around for a long time."

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_Perceptor got to be a white-striped Mini because I saw one the other day and it just seemed to be the right vehicle for him. Giant microscopes/telescopes not being too, well, mobile... And Springer gets to be an original Hummer because I think they're cool, even if horrible gas-guzzlers. And the twins are Murcielagos because Sunstreaker, in the form of one, stalked me the afternoon I wrote this._

_Sam's textile blanket exists for a few reasons, the first being extrapolated from Dwimordene's awesome story "Bridges", that humans have a far better tactile sense than transformers. Tactile quilts like Sam's are often given to babies in neonatal units to help make up for sensory deprivation during the first several months of their lives. I can't imagine a situation with more sensory deprivation than being a ghost; I think it would drive most people mad to be cut off from sensation like that. Fortunately Sam can use Bumblebee's holomatter projectors... And, being a little bit of a quilter, to me not much says you're loved quite like a blanket someone made to keep you warm._


	3. Apparitional Behavior

**Apparitional Behavior**  
by K.Stonham  
released 15th October 2007

One thing the Autobots had never understood was the human fascination with reproduction. On one hand they intellectually understood the need to propagate one's species and emotionally understood the desire for a creation one could teach, help shape, and be close to. On the other hand, though, they lacked the reference for biological imperatives and the pleasure humans seemed to take in touching one another regardless of actual reproductive capability or intent. Sam and Mikaela and the rest of their human contacts had taken stabs at explaining it to them, but in the end both sides of the conversation had acknowledged that there were things they simply _couldn't_ understand about one another, and just accepted it. The general feelings among Autobots about human biological processes, therefore, ranged from tolerance to amusement to vague clinical interest.

"You really want to know," Sam asked, perched holographically on an outcropping just to Bumblebee's left. His amused glance took in all the collected Autobots in the clearing, a full half-dozen of them gathered around the dying fire. The humans (living humans, anyway) in their party had long since retired to their tents for the night.

"Yeah. What the Pit about it is so great that your people are so fascinated with it, even when it serves no purpose?" Ironhide demanded.

Sam shrugged. "It feels good. It makes you feel closer to the other person."

"How?" Hot Rod demanded. "Physical closeness is no reflection of emotional connection."

"Ooh, look who's been listening to Perceptor, using the big words," Sideswipe teased.

"Just because _some_ of us haven't a decent processor in our heads," Arcee harassed Sideswipe back.

"Shut up, both of you," Springer groused.

Sam smiled and looked up at his guardian. "And you, Bumblebee?"

The Autobot scout shrugged a little, mimicking Sam's earlier body language. "I confess I don't understand your species' attachment to it either."

Sam mulled that over, nodding. "Well," he offered, "if you want a memory, I can give one to you. Are you sure you want it?"

* * *

Bumblebee considered it, looking around at the semi-circle of his comrades, who all seemed interested in the idea. It was something he and Sam had discovered by accident, how they could overlap in recharge and dream parts of one another's lives. It had only taken twice before they'd managed to construct walls and ways to keep themselves separate. Curious as he was about the human race, Bumblebee had found the brief experiences of living as one, the sheer sensory overload and knowledge of helplessness, terrifying. And Sam... Sam had nearly gone into shock while trapped in Bumblebee's memories, unable to feel as he was used to, learning things about the Cybertronian war that he'd never, ever wanted to know. 

They had figured out ways to handle the data transfers better while they were both awake, only initiating the exchange when they were assured of a time and space of peace, carefully selecting the rare memories they immersed one another within. But given how intense the humans seemed to believe their sexual interfaces were...

"I am willing to try," Bumblebee said, more for the sake of his fellow Autobots than for himself. They were all curious, and this was likely the only way any of them could come to understand their allies better. Once the data transfer was complete, he could selectively edit its sensory intensity to be more within the parameters of his species' operational standards, if necessary, before transferring the information on.

"If you're sure," Sam said, and dissolved the hologram. Bumblebee felt the ghost's touch, a familiar endothermic energy field, spreading out through his systems. He consciously released control of his body, trusting his spectral partner, knowing Sam wouldn't hurt him. They'd done this before.

Out of the cool rose a heat, a warmth that wrapped around him, placing him inside a human's skin, resolving itself into a painfully distinct _texture_ in the pattern of a woven blanket, and beneath him an unimaginable dichotomy of softness and hard planes that he could identify as a human body. His fingers--_one too many, part of him always felt_--were coated in damp heat, and the person below him, whom he recognized as Mikaela, even though she was no longer her proper size in relation to him, made whimpering sounds and gasps that the memory interpreted as approval rather than pain or distress. There was something coiled up inside him, a muscular knot of want and need that begged for more as a heartbeat pounded through him. And then she was guiding him, hands on a part of him that sparked strange, strange feelings of alien pleasure, and he was inside her, hot and wet and pressure and he couldn't feel this way, he shouldn't feel this way, it was too much--

Bumblebee broke free of the human memory, shaking, shuddering.

"Bumblebee?" Sam asked quietly, energy field still spread throughout him, like an embrace. His presence was cool and reassuring, though Bumblebee understood that humans found the ghost's non-holographic presence uncomfortable, too cold for their design parameters. Sam, like the rest of his species, put so much importance on touch, and Bumblebee was still only beginning to understand why. But he certainly didn't object to it, as it was something his partner needed, and even took a measure of pleasure in the spectral touch, knowing Sam meant it as a gesture of affection and trust.

"Why do your people," he managed to ask after a moment, "have to feel everything so intensely?"

"Because it's the way we are," Sam answered almost apologetically. "Sorry."

Cycling air through his cooling vents, Bumblebee managed to get his reactions back under control. Now at a distance from the immersive experience, he condensed it into a data packet that he transmitted to the others around the fire. One by one they received it and opened it up, optics going to half power as they considered it. Sam reformed on his rock, closer to Bumblebee now, close enough to touch in this form, and indeed, one hand did rest on his armor. It was faintly amusing at times to realize that Sam's image was made through his own holomatter projector, which made any touch essentially Bumblebee touching himself. In another way it was reassuring, and in a third way saddening; he never had to be wary of sudden moves around Sam because Sam wasn't physical any more. None of them were able to hurt his friend, even accidentally. And while Sam theoretically _could_ hurt them, he never would. His telekinetic abilities were draining enough that he used them only for practical purposes.

Assuming one counted the occasional morale-raising prank under "practical," of course.

"Why do your people subject yourselves to that?" Ironhide asked, looking at Sam. "How can you _enjoy_ that?" His shudder was expressive enough to make clear his meaning.

Sam blinked and looked up at Bumblebee. "I didn't think it was that bad," he said, questioning.

"Their sensational intensity is always that much greater than ours," Bumblebee told Ironhide. "It's what they're used to."

"No wonder humans can't take much of a temperature range," Sideswipe remarked. He rubbed his right shoulder. "Last time I felt anything that hot, my arm was melting off in a lava pit."

"No, I think I get it," Hot Rod disagreed. "I mean, you cut through the intensity and the temperatures and stuff, and... well, it's a little like a race. The road beneath you, the sky before you, and you want nothing more than to run, to win... sorry," he said, looking around at the others, "that doesn't make much sense, does it?"

"A little," Sam said, nodding thoughtfully. "Different kind of feeling good, different kind of freedom, but a little bit alike."

Springer shifted, the reddish firelight ghosting across his green armor, turning it brown. "It's about trust, too, and affection," he guessed quietly. "You wanted to make her feel good. She wanted to make you feel good."

"A little like spark-bonding," Arcee said, nodding at him. "Which we can do and humans can't. Not much, but... a little."

* * *

Sam nodded. "Yeah. A little." The experience of spark-bonding was one of the memories Bumblebee had shared with him, and one of the ones that made the Autobots seem the most like humans, while at the same time totally alien. There was nothing like it on Earth, not sex, not marriage, nothing. The closest thing he'd been able to translate it to, when he'd been asked, was telepathy, which didn't exist on Earth either but was at least a familiar concept through comic books. 

The mech Bumblebee had spark-bonded with had been one of his own caste, model line, gender, whatever inadequate English word the Cybertronian concept was translated to, millenia back, when the war had just been starting. Sam had been overwhelmed as their two lives had spilled through one another. Everything was seen, understood, known. Everything each of them were was given up freely to one another. It was, beyond comparison, the single most spiritual experience Sam had ever encountered, and one based on perfect, absolute, unbreakable trust.

Goldbug had been killed not too long afterward, and it was that crippling act of devastation which had led to Bumblebee joining the Autobot cause.

"Humans can't spark-bond," Sam said, "so we do the best we can with what we have. Sex makes us vulnerable, mentally as well as physically. Well, aside from prostitution," he amended with a rueful half-smile. "And it _does_," he stressed, looking at Ironhide, "feel really really good to us. Like falling free. Like contentment. Like love."

Ironhide snorted doubtfully. "Your species has its system processors misaligned," he opined.

"Aw, and here I thought you liked humans," Sideswipe teased.

"Like? Yes," Ironhide retorted. "Understand? Never."

"No fighting," Arcee said, placing an arm on Ironhide's as he switched to his cannons. "The humans are recharging," she reminded him. Sam still couldn't help but think of Arcee as female, even though the Autobots didn't really _have_ genders. Her model line, "femmes" as they'd been dubbed once they reached Earth, were really just another specialization of the transformer species, slight and designed for precision work--which made her a crack shot and a kick-ass sniper--and tending toward a higher pitch of vocal processor resonance, which came out as sounding "feminine" to Earth natives, the same way the bulkier "warrior" models like Ironhide had a lower pitch which sounded masculine. Bumblebee's more "general use" model was somewhere in between the two.

Assuming one translated model line specifications as "gender" rather than "race," Cybertron had once had forty-two distinct genders, a number which had amused Sam, and Bumblebee too once he'd explained the reference. Less than a dozen different types had arrived on Earth thus far, and many were feared to have been lost forever. Race probably was a better translation for the concept of femmes versus warriors versus scouts, Sam thought, given the way they'd each had their own distinct subcultures, but humans by and large clung to what they were used to, and so they viewed femmes as women, and the rest as male. It was an artificially constructed and imposed division, which amused most of the Autobots and irked the rest. Arcee and the other femmes, though, didn't seem to mind their being identified with one of the human genders. Some of them had even taken it on themselves to learn about the suffrage movement and act as role models and ambassadors for women's rights, even though they themselves were not actually "female" as biology would dictate it.

It always felt strange whenever Sam realized that he identified more, in some ways, with the Autobots than his own species. Granted, his was a pretty unique existence, whether he thought of himself as a ghost or as a "transmigratory energy-based lifeform engaged in a symbiotic existence" as Perceptor had put it, but still... he still counted himself as human.

"Were there ghosts on Cybertron too?" he asked.

Sideswipe blinked his optics, then leaned back a little. "We did have visiting energy lifeforms once in a while," he offered.

"Not really," Bumblebee replied. "Nothing like you, Sam."

"Huh. So no ghost stories, either, then?"

Springer laughed a little. "Those seem to be an Earth thing. Comes of being an organic species; simple sonic vibrations below twenty megahertz can make your kind think they're seeing and feeling things that aren't there."

"That sucks." Sam smiled and leaned back a little, looking up at the cold, clear moon. "It'd be the perfect night for scary stories around the campfire otherwise. But then," he laid out the bait, "I suppose that's an Earth thing too."

There was silence for a minute, and he had to hide his grin. "That doesn't mean we don't have scary stories," Ironhide finally rumbled. "Ones that would freeze your energon in your spark chamber."

"Oh?" Sam sat up a little straighter again.

"You go first, Hot Rod," Arcee urged. "You came the closest to them, after all."

Hot Rod shook his head. "I hate remembering that."

"Remembering what?" Sam asked.

"Cybertron had predators, too," Arcee said. "We called them 'Dwellers in the Depths' where I came from."

"We called them 'Slammers'," Sideswipe said, shaking his head. "And unlike you humans, the things that scared us were _real_," he leveled the charge at Sam.

Sam held a hand up, palm out, mocking a little. "Considering I'm _dead_, Sideswipe, don't be so sure all the things humans are afraid of don't exist."

"You met a Slammer?" Bumblebee asked Hot Rod, optics wide.

"Yeah." Chagrin and something else twisted Hot Rod's voice. "I was hiding out with Kup..."

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_The title is a play on "aberrational behavior" (for a pretty good definition, go watch the trailer for "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" on YouTube) and really has to do with some things I've been pondering about Cybertronians. There seems to be a prevalent fanon belief that sex and spark-joining feel roughly the same, which I'm not so sure needs to be the case. We can be different kinds of entities, with different feelings and experiences, and still end up with the same beliefs and emotions, no?_

_Similarly, after the whole "don't want to have to explain girl robots" reason Arcee was cut from the movie... why do femmes have to be female per se? Given that reproduction doesn't happen the same way for transformers as it does for humans, doesn't it make more sense that they're simply a different model line, built along different requirements, the same way Jazz is smaller and faster, or Ironhide bigger and bulkier? As the show "Third Rock from the Sun" posited, alien species don't have to be limited to the two genders we have on Earth. And "genders," as in this story, can end up being a mistranslation anyway._

_Lastly, the whole idea and story of the Slammers is borrowed without permission (and if the author tells me he objects, I'll happily delete that section of the story and rework it) from Koi Lungfish's awesome short story "Slammers", easily the best Transformers horror I've read. In any case, I hope y'all enjoyed the story. It ended up a bit more "talky" than the first two in the series, but it got some things out of my head._


	4. Hitchhiking Ghosts

  
**Hitchhiking Ghosts**  
by K.Stonham  
released 15th October 2007 

The puddles shushed against his repaired wheels as Bumblebee drove through the rainstorm.

"It was a dark and stormy night," his partner quipped to him.

"Two shots rang out?" Bumblebee asked in reply.

Sam gave a small laugh. "You're getting better at this game."

"Someday we'll get a copy of Cybertron's library up and running on this planet, and then we'll see how good you can get at our literature," he told his partner.

"'You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon'?" Sam asked with a smile.

"Your people with your fictional aliens," Bumblebee remarked, amused. "When Prowl and Perceptor get that copy of the library up, I promise you it will blow your mind. The collected works of every culture we've ever run into."

Sam let out a low whistle. "That... will take a long time to read through." Bumblebee caught sight of a figure ahead and began to slow down. "What's up?" his partner asked as the human figure came into the headlights.

"I thought we could offer her a ride," Bumblebee explained, pulling alongside the teenager dressed in a demure blue skirt and white blouse. A red umbrella over her head kept the pounding rain off, but from the wet condition of her black hair it hadn't always been so successful. He opened his passenger side door.

"Would you like a ride?" Sam called out.

She blinked, then smiled. "Yes, thank you," the young woman answered, and folded up her umbrella, stashing it in the back seat as she got into the car. She closed the door and smoothed her skirt.

"Where are you going to?"

"Ten White Lane," she answered. "It's about five miles ahead, just over Rushing River Bridge and past the old Dale place."

"That's not too far out of our way," Sam said, hands on the steering wheel, as Bumblebee pulled away from the curb.

"'Our'?" she asked.

"Sam Witwicky," he introduced himself, extending a hand to the young lady, which she took. "And this is Bumblebee," he said, gesturing nebulously at the dashboard.

She blinked, then smiled. "A pleasure to meet you. Both of you. I'm Mary Liddell."

"What were you doing walking home so late on a night like this?"

She shrugged one shoulder. "There was a dance. The guy who I went with ended up taking someone else home." She looked out the window. "They always do," she said softly. But she looked back at Sam and smiled again. "Thank you for offering me a ride, though."

"No problem. You should be careful in the future, though." He smiled back at her. "Not everyone offering you a ride's going to be harmless like me."

"No," she agreed. "Not everyone is."

There was something odd in her tone, Bumblebee realized. Something... off. Disconcerted, he ran a scan on her, one which she shouldn't have been able to notice. She stiffened.

"You okay?" Sam asked.

"No," she breathed, staring at the dashboard.

"Sam," Bumblebee spoke up, surprised and wondering why he was surprised, "she's not human."

* * *

"What?" Sam demanded of his partner as the heat flicked on without either of the passengers in the Camaro's cabin touching it.

"She's like you," Bumblebee said quietly.

His eyes wide, Sam stared at the girl in the passenger seat, who was pressing back into her seat, knuckles white, as she herself stared at the dashboard. "You're a ghost?" he asked.

"Who's talking?" she asked.

"Bumblebee," he told her. "He's the car. Well, not just a car, but that's what he is right now."

Mary shook her head. "That's crazy. Let me out--"

The locks snapped shut as she struggled to open the door.

"Mary," Sam said softly, calmly. Her frightened eyes flickered to him. "Look." He took his hands off the steering wheel. The car continued to drive itself. With a terrified mewl she curled up small against the door. "It's okay," Sam continued to soothe. "He's friendly."

He guessed he looked trustworthy because after a minute she slowly uncurled a little from her defensive position. "How is he talking?"

"He's actually a giant alien robot from the planet Cybertron," Sam said deadpan.

"Is that like from a science fiction novel?" she asked, shaking her head.

She didn't know about the Autobots. That gave him one clue, and if what Bumblebee had said was correct--and Sam had utter faith in his partner's scanners--then...

"When did you die?" he asked softly.

"October," she replied, not looking at him. "1953."

His eyes widened and his gaze dropped instinctively to her feet, which were, he noticed now, encased in bobby socks and black-and-white saddle shoes.

"I just want to go home," Mary added plaintively. "I can never get past the river. That's where he dropped me."

"Dropped you?"

She looked away, out the window at the darkness beyond and the silver streaks of water that painted Bumblebee's glass. "He was supposed to take me home," she said softly. "He didn't."

"Sam," Bumblebee said, slowing down a little, "the river's a mile ahead."

He looked back and forth between the dashboard and the girl, and made a decision. "Hold my hands," he told her.

"What?"

"Just do it! Bumblebee, floor it," he said, grasping cold white hands with his holographic own.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "I can't go past the bridge!"

Sam smiled at her. "Maybe not alone," he said, "but I bet together we can."

She was staring at him.

"I'm a ghost too," he said quietly, and felt her hands clench on his, her lips parting and a spark of hope coming into her eyes for the first time.

As the not-really-a-Camaro roared toward the bridge and the houses beyond, the temperature in its cabin plummeted. Sam's artificial breath and Mary's plumed in the air. Hoary frost crept across the seats where they touched them, and white snowflakes and ferns drew themselves on snowy windows.

The radio buzzed with static and the vehicle began to shake as the bridge rattled beneath the tires, wind howling outside, energy fields flaring inside. "Sam," Bumblebee said, vocal processor strained.

"Keep going," Sam grated, concentrating on trying to keep Mary with him, trying to keep the maelstrom of energy from hurting his partner. Her fingernails bit into his skin, her hands holding onto him in a desperate, crushing grip. Her eyes pleaded with him. "We're almost there--!"

* * *

The other side of the covered wooden bridge was silence. Bumblebee skidded to a halt, frame shuddering. Inside him, two figures looked up.

"Did it work?" the girl asked.

Sam looked out his windscreen at the silver moonlight falling on Bumblebee's hood. "It's not raining." He turned and looked out the rear window, at the other side of the ravine. "It's not raining on the other side either."

"That's... not possible," Bumblebee said, logic processors choking on the idea. But as he trained his sensors back, he saw that Sam was right and the far side of the bridge was as clear as this one.

Sam patted his steering wheel. "Bumblebee, _we're_ not possible," he pointed out.

"Is it over?" Mary asked, sounding stunned. "Can I go home now?"

Home. A word that was always so bittersweet. "Let's find out," Bumblebee proposed, and shifted into gear again, heading on down the road.

* * *

Number ten White Lane was a big, old house covered in wisteria branches, with lilac trees just blooming on either side. Sam inhaled their heady scent as he climbed out of Bumblebee's driver's side door. The lights were on inside.

"Do you suppose they'll know me?" Mary asked quietly from the other side of the car. "I've been gone so long... what if they've moved?" she asked, sudden fright on her face.

"Only one way to find out," Sam said, and rounded the car, catching her hand. "Come on." He led her up the three steps to the porch and rang the doorbell. Mary shifted from foot to foot beside him as they heard someone moving inside, and the porch light came on.

"Yes, who is it?" a woman's voice asked as the front door was opened.

"I-- I'm sorry, I must have the wrong house," Mary stuttered, looking at the elderly woman who stood on the other side of the screen. "I was looking for the Liddell residence--"

The woman's eyes were wide behind her reading glasses. "This is the Liddell residence," she said. "Do I... know you, young woman?" she asked cautiously.

"I... I'm Mary Liddell," the girl said nervously. "I just wanted to come home..."

The screen door was unlatched and slowly pushed open, the elderly woman stepping out onto the porch. Her eyes studied Mary. "Mary?" she asked.

Mary nodded.

"You don't recognize me... oh, of course you wouldn't," she said. "I'm Frances."

Mary's eyes went wide. "Frances?!" she gasped.

The woman nodded.

"But you're so old..."

"It's been over seventy years," Frances said softly, then suddenly hugged Mary. "You came home!" she said. "You finally came home. After all those people saying they'd seen you..."

Awkwardly, Mary hugged the other woman back. "I finally got a ride who brought me here," she replied.

Sniffling just a little, Frances straightened and smiled at Sam, her eyes glistening suspiciously. "Thank you, young man. Thank you for bringing my sister home."

"No problem," Sam replied with a smile of his own.

"Mary." Bumblebee spoke from behind them, transformed and kneeling on the drive, holding out a hand to her. "You forgot this." His hand uncurled, revealing the red umbrella she'd left in his back seat.

Her eyes were wide, as were her sister's, as they both stared at Bumblebee. But Mary smiled and took the umbrella from him. "Thank you, Bumblebee," she said. "Thank you both for bringing me home." And she turned back to her sister and handed her the umbrella. "I borrowed this for the dance and never got to return it to you."

"My umbrella," Frances said, staring at it. She looked back up at her sister. "Mary."

"I love you," Mary said, and kissed her on the cheek.

"Mary!" Frances said as her sister vanished. She looked around wildly for a moment, then sagged. When she looked up, her eyes were bright with tears again. "Thank you--both of you--for bringing her home to me," she said. "Please, won't you come in? I have some cookies..."

"Thanks, but no," Sam told her with a glance at his partner.

"We actually have an appointment we need to get on to," Bumblebee said apologetically.

She nodded in understanding. "Of course. That's how the world is these days, always so busy." Sam turned and stepped away as his partner folded himself back into Camaro form. "Young man!"

"Yes, ma'am?" he asked, turning back.

Frances clutched the umbrella like a lifeline. "How did you bring her back," she asked, "when no one else could?"

Sam hesitated, then smiled softly. "Let's just say we have certain things in common," he remarked, and let the hologram vanish from the porch step, reappearing by Bumblebee's door. It flicked open through him and he smiled at the elderly woman with a self-deprecating shrug, not wanting to frighten her.

Frances' mouth was open in an "o" as she stared at him, eyes wide. Then she relaxed, breathing the ghost of a laugh, and relaxed her grip on the umbrella. "Thank you," she said again, and Sam nodded and got in the car.

The porch lights went back off as they drove away, and nothing happened as they crossed over the wooden bridge. On the other side the moonlight still shone clear, like the rain had never happened.

And as they drove past where they had picked her up, on their way back to the interstate highway, there was no more teenage girl who had spent over seventy years just trying to get home.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_As y'all can probably tell from the title, I love the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. It is one of the two "traditional park opening rides" in my family. And, among the folk ghost stories, the one a ghost and his car seemed most likely to encounter was the vanishing hitchhiker type..._


	5. The Valley of the Shadow

  
**The Valley of the Shadow**  
by K.Stonham  
released 15th October 2007 

The rain was cold and wet when the yellow car pulled up outside of the nursing facility. The young man who flickered into existence inside the vehicle looked out through the windshield at the miserable conditions outside, and sighed. At least, he thought, his partner had snagged a parking space near the room the patient they were visiting was in. He opened the car door and listened to the rain hiss down on the pavement, the grass, the leaves of the trees outside, for a minute before he actually exited the vehicle.

Sam adjusted his hologram to be intangible so that the rain went through him rather than soaking in to him, pulled his jacket over his head in case anyone from inside was watching, and jogged for the front door at a reasonable pace. He didn't resolidify his image until he reached the sheltered area in front of the double doors, looking back with mild sympathy at his Camaro, which sat out unprotected in the cold, windy rain.

Most people wouldn't have caught the Camaro's amusement at the oh-so-human preconceptions of what counted as annoying weather.

Most people weren't thirty years dead, haunting said Camaro.

Grinning and shaking his head at his friend, Samuel James Witwicky stepped forward, waited for the electronic doors to swing wide enough open, then darted inside the building. With a brief stop at the front desk to check in, he headed for room 139, bed A.

* * *

Reggie looked up at the knock on his door frame and straightened up, seeing the visitor who grinned carelessly at him. "Kid!" 

"Hey, Simmons," Sam greeted him, walking inside the room. He took Reggie's hand as he set down the crossword/sudoku section of the paper, and gave him a firm handshake. No bleeding heart pity, Reggie thought in approval. The kid had learned well.

"Where's your partner?" he asked as Sam pulled up a chair. "Out in the parking lot?" Sam nodded. "I tell them they should build on some covered parking or something, they ignore me," he groused. "'No one's going to come see you in that kind of weather, Mr. Simmons'," he parodied one of the nurses. He shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Morons."

"Heh." Sam laughed in agreement. "They don't get it that weather doesn't mean as much to the transformers as to humans. Where's your roommate?" he asked, looking around.

"Bingo session." Reggie rolled his eyes. "No one around here seems to give a rat's ass about living to the fullest until the very last minute," he griped, knowing that Sam would understand how he felt. "No, it's all a long slow slide into death..."

Sam nodded. "Go down fighting. Choke the bastards as they try to swallow you whole."

"Exactly!" Reggie agreed, pointing at him. "People like us, with that kind of attitude, are the reason the Decepticons haven't taken over the planet." He sighed. "Wish I could be out there on the front lines again."

"Hey." Sam put his hand on Reggie's leg, smiling reassuringly. "You did your bit. Want a total of how many times you saved the planet?"

"Seven," Reggie replied, being up on the current "scorecards" for the main human allies. "Not a bad total for one life," he mused.

Sam was silent.

"Don't give me that, kid," Reggie groused. "We all go into the night at some point, and hell if I didn't live a lot longer than I thought I would some days. Just some things there's no fighting against. Human genetics, that's one of them."

"Yeah." Sam still looked a little sad.

"Besides," Reggie said softly, "I'm not afraid."

"Come on, everyone's afraid," Sam objected.

"I'm not. And you know why, kid?"

Sam shook his head. "Why?"

"Because I look at you," Reggie told him, "and I think about the fact that I haven't seen you age in thirty years, and it makes me realize that death isn't an end. It's only a new adventure."

* * *

Sam was very still for a minute. "You knew." No one was supposed to know. Or only a very, very select few who weren't Autobots, anyway. Simmons, friend and ally though he was, wasn't on that short list. 

"Kid, I ain't dumb," Simmons told him. "Once I twigged, I did some digging--and you get as high as I did and you have a lot of leeway to dig through things people aren't supposed to see. Found an unfiled death cert for you, and some property transfers of everything that was yours to the Autobot forces. That pretty much filled in the blanks."

Sam breathed a short, sharp sigh of resignation, looking away, out the window at the yellow car that sat beyond in the rain. "I used to age the hologram," he confessed, looking back. "Mickey told me I sucked at it and to knock it off. She said I was making her feel old and I should let her have the illusion she wasn't getting there."

Simmons nodded. "So what caused it?"

"You remember that incident back in '14 with Shockwave and that planet-buster bomb he'd built?" Sam asked. Simmons nodded. "He nailed me before I could defuse the thing. Totally vaporized. I was so focused on the job that I didn't even notice."

Simmons' eyes were wide. "And then?"

Sam shrugged. "Figured whatever I'd done to defuse the bomb, I could still be doing. I hacked his motor circuits and took down his shielding for good measure. Bumblebee... kept me afterwards. Kept me from going on to wherever dead people are supposed to go," Sam clarified.

"It didn't hurt?" Simmons asked quietly.

Sam shook his head. "I don't even remember dying," he confessed.

Simmons nodded. "Good to know. I always did wonder why you let Mikaela get away."

"We were already broken up by that point," Sam dismissed. "We were going different places in our lives, and we wanted different things. We decided we were better off as friends than as a couple."

"And then you get killed in action and that pretty much nixed any possibility of getting back together later," Simmons concluded.

"Yup." Sam nodded. "At least we're still friends. If she hadn't been able to have Mickey's kids for 'grandkids,' I think my mom would've found some way to exorcise me, just for not making her a grandmother."

Simmons' eyebrows were high. "Does that work?" he asked.

"Don't know, don't care to find out," Sam replied.

* * *

"Sam," Bumblebee said, materializing his own human hologram in the doorway in response to the elevated stress levels he was detecting in the elderly human, "Mister Simmons. You should summon the nurse." 

Simmons' eyebrows inched toward his hairline, but he made no move toward the call button. "Hey, Bumblebee. Long time no see."

"Simmons--" Sam said, but the ex-agent cut him off.

"The most they can do is give me a shot of something that'll keep me a couple hours," Simmons told him. "Your guys' own doc told me that I'm dying. Let's face facts here."

"Ratchet's knowledge of human physiology and medicine is incomplete," Bumblebee said softly, stepping into the room. "One of your own doctors may be able to..." He let his voice trail off. Simmons was shaking his head.

"The docs in these kind of places are here to make dying easier, that's all." In addition to his increased heart rate, a fine tremor had begun to shake Simmons' hands. "And if Ratchet doesn't know all there is about human medicine after nearly forty years studying it, I'll eat my hat."

"He sure still hasn't mastered tact," Sam quipped, though his expression was worried.

"Ratchet has never known tact," Bumblebee told his partner. "At least, not as a medic."

Color was slowly fading from Simmons' face, but if he felt discomfort he masked it with a smile. "Grab me that picture, would you?" he asked, pointing at a silver-framed portrait that sat on a table among a cluster of others, just out of his reach. Sam beat Bumblebee to it and the frame floated gently into Simmons' hands. He stared for a moment at Sam. "You do seances too?" he eventually asked.

Sam grinned wanly. "Table rappings and ouija boards are my specialty."

Simmons just looked at him, nodding thoughtfully. "Gonna ask a favor here," he said, finger tapping on the glass protecting the photograph. It was of a dark-haired dark-eyed young man in a military uniform. "This is my sister's grandson, Private John Daniels. First one since me to go into the 'family business.' Keep an eye on him for me, will you? He's a good kid. Smart, even."

Sam nodded. "Will do," he promised.

The irregularity of Simmons' heartbeat was beginning to show through to his breathing, but he took great care as he set the portrait back down on a portion of the table he could reach. His eyes met Bumblebee's. "I know I've said I'm sorry for what I did back then, with Sector Seven and holding you, but... I really do mean it. I was wrong. I'm sorry."

"You were afraid," Bumblebee corrected softly. "You had no proof we were on your side. It has long since been forgiven, Mister Simmons. By all of us."

"Reggie," the man corrected with an effort and a smile.

"Reggie," Bumblebee agreed. From either side of the bed he and Sam took Simmons' hands, holding on, feeling them tense as the spirit within the human body separated, after nearly eighty years, from the body that had housed it. Simmons bit his lip, the breath of what Bumblebee recognized as a Catholic prayer whispering from him, as the light faded from behind his eyes and they became glassy.

* * *

The two visitors were hustled aside as Danielle took in the state of the patient, yelling down the hallway for a doctor. It was too late, she knew that already as she tried to take a pulse. She tried not to let it upset her. Mister Simmons was a DNR, but she'd liked him. He'd had Autobots as visitors, and while she'd tried not to go all starry-eyed and fangirly, he'd introduced her to a couple of them in passing, which had been about the coolest thing ever. And he'd always been snarky and snide and willing to discuss politics with her, which almost no one else was. 

When she turned to the two young men to tell them she was sorry and he was gone, though, they'd vanished. She stuck her head outside the door, but they weren't in the hallway either. Then the head duty nurse bustled into the room and Danielle forgot about the two men. Obviously they knew he was dead, and were gone themselves.

* * *

The car and its invisible spirit sat outside in the rain, watching through the window as the two nurses did their job. An old song with a hint of a country sound to it played quietly on the radio as a doctor came in to pronounce the death. 

"At least it was easy," one said to the other. "He got to choose when he went... and he went with mind and dignity intact."

"He wasn't alone," the other said. "That was good. No one should have to be."

"Yeah."

"Sam... you don't want to go, do you?" Bumblebee asked. "Reggie seemed happy to cross over. If you want..."

"No," Sam replied sharply. "I'm not leaving you."

"Sam..." Bumblebee whispered.

"Whatever's on the other side, it can wait," Sam said. "Whenever you go, I'll go there with you. But not until then."

The Autobot was slightly shaken by his partner's vehemence.

"Besides," Sam said in a lighter tone, "I'm only fifty-five. That's not that old even by _human_ standards."

They shared a laugh. Inside, an empty body's eyes were closed, the blonde nurse who had come in after them lingering a moment and, looking furtively around, placing two silver coins on the closed eyes to pay the ferryman. The two outside could have told her that the soul had already departed, but didn't.

_And it's just a box of rain, I don't know who put it there._

"'Bee, what's the song?"

"It's by a group called the 'Grateful Dead'," the Autobot told him.

"Aw, man, they were old when I was _born_," Sam griped.

_Believe it if you need it, or leave it if you dare._

"So was Shakespeare," Bumblebee returned. "You still quote him."

"Yeah. So did Simmons... Reggie."

A metallic sigh. "He was a good friend. He will be missed."

_And it's just a box of rain, or a ribbon for your hair._

"Yeah. He will."

Unnoticed by the nurse inside, the yellow car rumbled to life and slowly pulled out of the parking lot, alone only to those who didn't have the sensors to detect the spirit that remained with it by both of their choices.

_Such a long, long time to be gone, and a short time to be there..._

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_Aside from any ideas of cultural differences between humans and transformers, being a ghost and haunted by a ghost respectively would, I think, give Sam and Bumblebee a radically different perspective on death than the common viewpoint. They _know_, after all, that it's not an end, just another stage. And to those who know pertinent facts about Sam, his deceased status could be really rather reassuring. Well, except to the Decepticons. To them, his deceased status would be _annoying _because it means they can't kill him._

_The furthest I usually go with the idea of songs in music is chapter titles, but I really wanted that last lyric to end the story, so I intercut the song's final stanza with the story. Hopefully that's not too irritating. The song is "Box of Rain" by the Grateful Dead, who, unlike Sam, I like, having had their music as part of my childhood soundtrack..._


	6. Crossroads at Midnight

**Crossroads at Midnight**  
by K.Stonham  
released 15th October 2007 

"The Devil Went Down to Georgia" was playing on the juke box as Sam entered the diner, and for a minute he suspected his partner of collusion. A quick glance backward with a raised eyebrow at the yellow vehicle, though, gave him the radiated impression of denial and innocence.

That lasted just as long at it took for two more cars, one a Lamborghini Murcielago as golden yellow as the Camaro, and the other a red Dome Zero painted with orange and gold flames, to screech around a corner and do neat parallel drifts into the parking lot, ending up just a couple feet from one another and the black-striped Camaro. Sam rolled his eyes and let the diner door drift closed behind him just as the two vehicles' drivers--who may or may not have been there a moment before--exited their vehicles, smiling and laughing at one another.

It was real easy to find the crowd of racers whose vehicles were parked outside. They were gathered around a few tables in the corner, looking out the window at the new arrivals, some of them practically drooling over the admittedly very shiny supercars. Sam, who actually _knew_ said supercars, was less impressed by them. He sauntered over. "Hey," he said, "mind if I join you?"

By the time Sunstreaker and Hot Rod got over themselves, actually remembered they were on a mission, and entered the diner, Sam had made friends with the four fellow car aficionados at his table, waved off the waitress' offer of a menu, and was defending the honor of his 2009 Camaro. "Sure, it's a little old by now," he admitted, amused, thinking of how old Bumblebee _really_ was, "but it's tuned as sweet as you please, and I've never had a smoother, faster ride." No need to say that Bumblebee had not only been his first car, but his _only_ car. All matters of whether Bumblebee was his or if he was in fact Bumblebee's aside, he'd never _wanted_ another car.

"Oh, excuse me, what are my brother and I?" Sunstreaker demanded through his hologram.

Sam strove for guilelessness. "Pains in the ass?" he suggested. Sunstreaker glowered at him, while Hot Rod stifled a laugh. "Guys, these are Sunny and Rod," he introduced his friends to the racing crowd. "The Lambo and the Zero are theirs."

Hot Rod's hologram wasn't too out of the ordinary, a slender, pale human with an engaging grin, freckles and red hair and the startling blue eyes all the Autobots favored. Sunstreaker, though, suiting his reputation as the Autobots' peacock, was stunning, all rich golden hair and warm sun-tanned skin, a body that Mikaela would have once drooled over, and a face that would have been perfect on the cover of any men's fashion magazine. When the two Autobots had found seats at the other tables full of racers, Tony leaned across the table toward Sam. "Your friend Sunny," he asked in a low, hopeful tone. "Is he single?"

"Sort of," Sam replied. "He hasn't got a steady, if that's what you mean. I'll give you a warning, though: he's an insensitive ass."

Tony grinned back. "Sometimes, who cares?" he asked in reply.

Sam laughed a little. "Good luck, then."

* * *

It hadn't been much initially, Bumblebee thought, keeping one set of sensors on the diner while scanning the parked vehicles with others. A few reports of illegal street races in mid-Western American towns. There had been some injured bystanders and a few totaled cars with badly injured or killed drivers. Nothing that would seem out of the ordinary for the activity they were engaged in. Except then the property damage and life tolls for each incident had begun increasing beyond the normal, and the eyewitness reports included irregularities, things human cars simply _couldn't_ do: vehicles that soared through the air and smashed down atop others, or crashed through brick buildings, and then drove away without a scratch. 

In other words, Decepticons.

Optimus had dispatched several teams of the younger, faster Autobots to fan out through the cities in the calculated path of destruction and intercept the Decepticons. They were to capture them if it was possible, and incapacitate or destroy them if not. So far none of the teams had had any luck, but sooner or later one of them had to. All the teams had at least one human liaison with them to help them get entrance into the local racing sub-cultures. This was because, frankly, even with the external holomatter projectors everyone else had gotten installed for the mission, most of the Autobots _still_ weren't able to fake being human all that well. Bumblebee, having been on Earth the longest of all of them, was one of the best at it, but even with his knack of picking up the nuances of local cultures, he was happy to leave the "meet, greet, and blend" part of the operation to his partner. Sam, as a human, understood humans.

So it wasn't a surprise when they ended up at the outskirts of the town, in the parking lot of a dilapidated drive-in movie theater, at a half hour to midnight. Most of the local racers were gathered, only waiting for a couple more to arrive, and more than a few of them were gathered around Sunstreaker and Hot Rod, checking out their interiors and exteriors while bemused holograms lingered nearby. Bumblebee wasn't bothered by the relative lack of attention; the twins and Hot Rod, among others, had always been flashier than he had. Faster, too, though granted even they couldn't best Blurr in a land speed contest. _No one_ could best Blurr. But he was on another team, and while Bumblebee couldn't outrace Sunstreaker or Hot Rod, he could almost certainly outpace any human vehicle present, being much faster than the purported factory specs for his chosen alt mode.

Holographic fingers shushed along the satin finish of his left front quarter-panel. Holographic jeans touched against him, the weight of an artificial body leaning on him as Sam looked around at the gathered racers before tugging open Bumblebee's door and getting into the driver's seat. "I don't think any of them are the problems," he said, hands running along the steering wheel's leather grip.

"I agree," Bumblebee replied softly. "Maybe the next town?"

"Maybe," Sam agreed.

"Hey, Sam!" Tony jogged up. "Carlos is here and we're ready to start the race."

* * *

A map of the town was spread out on Hot Rod's hood since he was the one closest to the light post. "Right, listen up, ladies and gents," Carlos instructed the gathered crowd. "Tonight we start here and end up at Big Red Rock on the north side of town. The cops--" and there was a snicker because his father was apparently the chief of police, "--have speed traps set up on the south and west sides, so don't go messing it up for the rest of us, okay? They're at Nelson and Warner, Third and Green, and Main and Bansford." He stabbed a finger at the appropriate points on the maps. "Avoid at all costs. Now, for our newcomers," he said, grinning at Hot Rod, Sunstreaker, and Sam, "house rules are any route goes, any pedestrians injured loses you the game, same if the cops catch you, and property damage incurred costs you off your finish time. You in?" 

"We're in," Hot Rod snapped. "See if you can keep up with us."

The grins from the humans clustered around his hood told him they were all thinking the same thing.

"Need maps?" one of the girls, he thought her name was Ellie maybe, asked with a saucy smirk.

"Who needs maps," Sam quipped, "when you have satellite?"

"Well, then." Carlos folded up the map. "Everyone, start your engines."

* * *

The race itself was uneventful: darkened streets with only a few onlookers, his engine thrumming hot, and friction warming his tires as Sunstreaker drifted around corners. The pleasant heft of inertia and Earth's gravity lent challenge to his perfection, Hot Rod's taunts impetus, and it was so satisfying when he finally arrived at the endpoint seconds ahead of the speedster. Bumblebee wasn't that far behind them, arriving more modestly with most of the rest of the pack, and then there were envied congratulations and discussions of route and technique and it all felt like a waste of Sunstreaker's time. 

He didn't _like_ humans the way the rest of the Autobots seemed to. Oh, he appreciated that Earth was their planet and that it really wasn't right for the Decepticons to get to kill them, but even _after_ they'd realized their species wasn't the only sentient one out there, they really had nothing to recommend them as a race. Their species-centricism was stunning and their xenophobia astounding. Sunstreaker knew his opinions weren't popular and so usually kept them to himself, but when he was forced into pointless socializing like this with them--

"You're glowering," Bumblebee told him, his own hologram appearing next to Sunstreaker, arrival unnoticed by any of the humans. "What's wrong?"

"This is pointless," Sunstreaker retorted, gesturing around. "Why do we have to interact with them like this? We're not like they are."

Bumblebee's hologram, shorter than his, with messy dark blond curls, a gentle smile, and a build that hinted at hidden strength, shrugged slightly. "I don't like using the holograms either, but in this case it's to help us catch the Decepticons. We'd be too obvious any other way."

"You like the humans," Sunstreaker accused. "You even have one of your own."

"So you'd like them better if you had a human partner too?" Bumblebee jibed.

"No," Sunstreaker shot back. "I just don't understand why we have to stay _here_."

Bumblebee's hologram leaned back a little further against Sunstreaker, deliberately in his space. "The Decepticons are targeting them and you know it. Besides, what has any other world got to offer that this one hasn't?"

"Culture. Class. A society built to our scale," Sunstreaker relentlessly ticked off.

"And history with us," Bumblebee agreed. "Most of them not so good," he said pointedly. "On Earth we have the chance to _create_ that history, Sunstreaker."

Sunstreaker laughed. "And, what, be partners with them?" he asked. "Allies?" He shook his head. "You've gone native, Bumblebee. The humans don't like us and probably never will. We have to hide from them. Why are you on their side?"

Bumblebee's humanoid expression was soft and unconcerned. "You say that like compassion's a bad thing," he replied. "You can always leave if you really dislike Earth that much, Sunstreaker. Most of us would understand why."

"I'm not leaving Sideswipe," Sunstreaker replied flatly.

"Well, then, why not at least try to have a good time?" Bumblebee asked. He flashed a sudden bright grin. "You're got more than your share of admirers--car or hologram," he teased.

"Organics," Sunstreaker scoffed, but had to admit at least some of the humans had decent taste. The lines of the alternate mode he and Sideswipe had picked weren't _too_ bad.

"You could always take up painting and sculpture again," Bumblebee told him. "Teach the 'organics' a thing or two."

"I live in terror," Sam said dryly, walking up to the two of them.

"Shut up," Sunstreaker sniped at Bumblebee's partner.

"You do know most of them would flip out if you transformed?" Sam asked Sunstreaker. "They'd be on you like white on rice if they realized you were an Autobot."

Sunstreaker looked at Bumblebee. "Idiomatic translation?" he asked.

Bumblebee laughed. "They'd love you," he explained.

Sunstreaker blinked in surprise.

"You spend too much time around the politicians," Sam said. "The younger humans are, generally the more flexible. And car lovers? Tend to have wet dreams over Lamborghinis who're actually kick-ass giant alien robots."

Sunstreaker blinked again and looked at the humans.

"So, do you think we should move on too?" Bumblebee asked Sam. Beyond the ghost's hologram, Hot Rod's sat by a fire, laughing and chatting with a female human with a comfortable ease Sunstreaker could not understand. He wondered what Hot Rod was saying to her.

"Actually, no," Sam said. His hologram uncharacteristically fritzed out for a second, catching Sunstreaker's attention again. Bumblebee stood up a little straighter where he leaned against Sunstreaker, expression going serious. "There's something..." Sam trailed off, eyes unfocusing. "I think we need to stay here," he said, voice soft and distant. "If we leave, we'll miss them."

"Are you malfunctioning?" Sunstreaker asked uncertainly.

"Are you sure, Sam?" Bumblebee asked.

The human ghost shrugged, refocusing. "I'm never sure about this stuff, Bumblebee."

"But you're always right," Bumblebee countered. Sam nodded. "So we stay." His hologram abruptly disappeared, and Sunstreaker turned, unsurprised to see Tony and Carlos walking toward them, drinks in hand.

"So, you're moving on later today, then?" Carlos asked Sam even as Tony perched on Sunstreaker's hood right next to his hologram.

"Actually," Sam said, with a glance at Sunstreaker even as he leaned back himself against Bumblebee, "we decided we'd like to hang around for a few days. When's the next race?"

* * *

Whatever it was that felt off about Dalby's Falls, Sam couldn't find it directly. It ended up a game of hot/cold with the local energy currents over the next few days until he and Bumblebee ended up at an old railroad crossing, staring at the raised crossing bars. 

"This is it, Sam?" Bumblebee asked, transforming. He raised a hand and ran it along the white-painted wood, using his own extra-human senses to scan it.

"Yep." Sam reformed at his guardian's feet and stared out at the rusty tracks, considering. The shimmering energy he felt stretched along the rails a few hundred feet in either direction of the crossing. "Maybe there was an accident?"

"Few years back, actually," said an old man's voice. Sam jumped and whirled in surprise; the whirring of his partner's servos indicated Bumblebee had jerked his head in shock too.

An old man in a flannel shirt, straw hat, and worn blue overalls had walked up behind them. He looked up at Bumblebee in interest. "You're one of those Autobots, am I right?"

"Yes, sir," Bumblebee answered.

"Nice work your people do," the old man said with a nod. "Much appreciated."

"Thank you."

The man looked at Sam. "You were asking if there was a train wreck here? There was, back in the nineteen-sixties. Train ran into a car full of kids high out of their minds. They were racing and thought they could beat it." He shook his head in disgust, tucking his thumbs into his pockets. "Idiots. None of them survived. Folks say sometimes on a full moon at midnight you can still hear the train go through." He quirked a smile. "Don't put too much stock in it myself, but I did hear it once or twice when I was younger."

Sam looked up at his partner; Bumblebee met his gaze and shrugged.

"Don't think you boys came out here just to chase down old ghost stories, though," the man said thoughtfully. "Anything I can help you with?"

Bumblebee knelt down to be closer to the human level. "There have been street races with high fatalities recently," he said. "We have reason to believe that the perpetrators are not human, and may choose to race here soon."

The man nodded slowly. "Not much I can do about that," he admitted. "You boys be careful, though. Don't need any more people getting hurt."

"Yes, sir," Sam and Bumblebee replied almost as one.

* * *

Trouble showed up at the diner the next afternoon. 

Sam, Sunstreaker, and Hot Rod all tensed at their tables as three new vehicles cruised into the parking lot of the racers' hang-out. A dark gray Enzo Ferrari pulled up, engine roaring, followed by a Lamborghini Gallardo SE, white with deep blue trim and a crimson hood, and finally a wine-colored Porsche 550 Spyder with a man with cropped brown hair, a mustache, and piercing blue eyes sitting in the driver's seat.

"I recognize that hologram," Sam muttered.

"They have _no_ imagination," Sunstreaker agreed contemptuously.

"Money starts coming to town and it doesn't stop," Carlos murmured.

"Hey, guys, think they're here to race?" Hot Rod asked from the next table, his eyes alight in anticipation of a race... or a fight.

"If they're not," Ellie said, "they're wasting those sweet rides. I'd love to take a spin in that Porsche... what?" she defended herself, looking around. "It's a classic!"

"You have no appreciation for speed," Tony told her.

"You have no appreciation for styling," she shot back.

"I don't know," Sunstreaker disagreed, leaning back in his seat and looking smug. "I think he has a pretty _good_ eye for style..."

"You looking to pick up a new driving partner after all?" Sam teased.

"Thank Primus Tracks didn't come with us too," Hot Rod responded. "One peacock's enough in this party!"

Outside, three men looking enough alike to be brothers got out of the three vehicles and headed into the diner, giving only contemptuous glances to any of the vehicles waiting in the parking lot.

* * *

A quarter to midnight found them lined up outside the drive-in again, six Cybertronians swelling the ranks of the local racing club to nearly twenty. Bumblebee kept an eye on the Decepticons. One was revving his engine wildly, another practically rocking back and forth on his struts, while the impression the third gave off via his hologram was bored apathy. _Sunstreaker, you take the Ferrari. Hot Rod, you're on the Lamborghini._

_What, no Lamborghini versus Lamborghini battle action?_ Hot Rod teased.

Bumblebee was amused at the idea, but didn't let himself laugh. Human lives were at stake. _Don't let them hurt anyone, transform and take them out if necessary. Let them know _first _that they have an option to come along peacefully._

Ellie danced into the headlights of the front row of cars, flag held high as she stopped on the divider line. "Gentlemen, start your engines!" she commanded unnecessarily, eyes sparkling. Grinning at the hum of powerful machinery displayed before her, she dropped the flag.

Cars tore off into the night.

* * *

_Oh no you don't,_ Hot Rod thought to himself, diving in front of the Gallardo, forcing it away from the sidewalk as it was able to jump a corner--one with three college-age humans standing on it, watching wide-eyed. The Lamborghini spun out of control for a minute, then revved angrily and tore after him. "I see you!" Hot Rod called back to it. "Tacky paint job--the red hood _so_ does not suit!" 

"Stop looking at me!" the Decepticon demanded, putting on even a little more speed. Hot Rod laughed contemptuously, hanging a sharp left that took them away from the race's endpoint, but more importantly out of town. No Decepticon could outrun him, and there was a nice deserted dry riverbed a few miles out that would be the perfect place to take down a pain in the aft...

* * *

The Ferrari led him on a nice chase, deviating from the race course early on and doubling back behind the others. Its dark gray paint helped it fade into the night, and if it wasn't for IR tracking Sunstreaker might almost have lost the guy. Fortunately he'd played more than enough racing games with Decepticons to know all their tricks. So far the guy hadn't hurt anyone or anything, but as soon as he saw the taillights of the other race vehicles coming up ahead of them, Sunstreaker knew that was about to change. He cursed silently as he realized the hindmost was Tony's midnight blue Integra, and put on an extra burst of speed, catching up just as the Decepticon smashed through the smaller vehicle and, undeterred, into the next. 

"Oh, slaggit," Sunstreaker muttered, transforming in a somersault _over_ the wrecked vehicles, arm cannon already out and locked on target. Six fast plasma blasts blew out the Ferrari's rear tires and windscreen, and with a scream of rage the Decepticon whirled, transforming himself, and launched himself through the air at Sunstreaker.

Using a move he'd perfected during millenia of fighting Decepticon jets, Sunstreaker caught the 'Con's wrists, slammed him into the pavement, and fired three more blasts right into his core unit, knocking the Ferrari into stasis lock. "You," he said, annoyed enough to quote Prowl, "are under arrest."

"...Sunny?" a human voice asked from by his right foot. Startled, Sunstreaker looked down.

Tony was looking up at him, expression stunned, nearly half the members of the racing club arrayed behind him.

After a minute Tony's face broke into a wide grin. "That was so cool," he said. "Thanks."

Feeling strange, Sunstreaker hesitated. "You're welcome," he said finally.

* * *

Bumblebee would not have expected the small Porsche to be the most difficult to catch of the three Decepticons. In retrospect, perhaps he should have. He was hard-put to keep up with the Porsche, even as Sunstreaker and then Hot Rod reported missions accomplished. 

Sam slipped from his driver's seat and into his systems, spreading out through every inch of Bumblebee. His touch cooled down engine heat a little, but he couldn't help any with more downdraft. "Trust me?" his partner asked.

"Always," Bumblebee answered, concentrating on not losing the burgundy Decepticon.

"Then take the corners tighter--don't mind the lampposts."

Sam _did_ something and the air resistance dropped just slightly and unthinkingly Bumblebee obeyed--

--passing through lampposts and power poles like they weren't even there.

"Sam?" he asked, startled, screeching just a little closer to the Porsche.

He could _feel_ the grin. "Ghosts are immaterial," Sam explained. "Why shouldn't the car they're possessing be too?"

A fierce shock of joy leaped through him. Sam had figured it out, what to do, how they could catch the car...

"Chase him toward the railroad crossing," Sam murmured distantly, and it was with another kind of shock that Bumblebee realized he'd gone "mystic," as Mikaela called it, again.

"Why?" he asked, even as he moved to do so.

"Don't know," Sam murmured in reply. "I just know it's important."

The tracks weren't that far away and the Decepticon either willing or unrealizing that it was being herded. The klaxons were sounding and the crossing bars lowering as they approached, even though there was no train approaching--

A silver-white train roared out of nowhere even as the Porsche slid under the lowered crossing bars and into the train, the Camaro roaring after, unable to stop as it phased through the bars and through the train and came out the other side.

The night was silent as Bumblebee skidded to a halt, drifting the turn to face the crossing again.

There was no train.

The klaxons were silent.

The crossing bars were up.

More tellingly, the Porsche had disappeared. There were no skid marks on the crossing's far side save Bumblebee's own, and no sound of another engine.

"What the Pit was that?" Bumblebee swore in rare shock.

He got no answer from his partner.

"Sam?" he asked.

And realized, to his horror, that the cool touch of his partner, even the faintest sense of his presence that was there while he was unconscious, was gone.

Bumblebee was alone in the middle of the road on the moonlit country night.

* * *

The Autobots, Carlos thought, were pretty damn cool. 

After their reinforcements had arrived and taken away the two that Sunny and Rod had captured, they'd helped repair the damage to downtown, which put them in the good graces of Carlos' father and the mayor, and then they'd hung around. Luckily the insurance companies took "destroyed by Decepticon attack" as a valid excuse for car destruction these days, so Tony and Rick and Liza had gotten payouts for their vehicles... though the current bet in the race club was that Tony would be leaving town with Sunny once the Autobots took off. It turned out that Sunny had a twin brother, even, who'd turned up and approved of Tony on the basis that Sunny liked him.

Interspecies relationships. Who knew?

Sam's car, though, was quieter than most of the other Autobots, and just hung around the edges of things even though he'd apparently been the team's leader. And when asked where Sam had gone, he just got even quieter and said "Away," in a tone that didn't encourage further questioning. He sounded... actually, he sounded a lot like a guy who'd lost his best friend, and only talking with the middle-aged chick who'd arrived in the emergency Hummer seemed to make him feel any better.

Still, in the end, the Autobots were too much excitement for their little mid-Western town, and Carlos knew they'd be leaving soon. All the same, he decided, he was really glad they'd come to Dalby's Falls.

* * *

Bumblebee sat in the middle of the road, engine silenced, as the clouds drifted lazily in front of the full moon. He'd seen Sunstreaker and Sideswipe off earlier that day, with a promise only half meant of following behind them soon. 

His chronometer slowly counted down to midnight.

He'd discussed it with Mikaela, and come to the conclusion that the ghost train had somehow taken not only Dead End--the name of the Decepticon, according to his brothers in custody--but Sam as well. And that the only way he could get Sam back, or go on with Sam, was to find that train again.

_I'm not leaving you,_ Sam had promised. _Whenever you go, I'll go there with you. But not until then._

"I'm not leaving you either, Sam," Bumblebee promised back.

So it was nearly midnight, on the night of a full moon, and he was waiting.

He nearly jumped as the klaxons began ringing, starting his engine as the crossing bars came down. He had to time it right...

A rush of air preceded the passage of the ghost train, and he ran for it, his accelerator pedal pressing to the floor as the train appeared, rushing past.

He ran--

The white bars shattered as he rammed through them--

_SAM!_ he cried as he hit the train--

...and he found himself sitting once again on the far side of the tracks, staring at the empty rails, the only evidence of his passage the splinters of the wooden crossing bars strewn all over the ground.

"Sam?" he asked hesitantly.

There was no answer.

Bumblebee's processors failed.

As he tried to work through the incomprehensible fact that it hadn't worked, he hadn't got his partner back, a pair of sneakered footsteps slowly walked up from behind him.

A hand tugged his driver's-side door open.

A human body slipped into his driver's seat.

Hands ran over his steering wheel.

"Sam?" he barely dared ask or hope.

The figure dissolved, endothermic touch spreading out through him, like a full-body hug.

"You came back," Sam whispered. "I thought I was stuck on that train forever. My own personal Purgatory--" There was a hitch in his voice, almost a sob.

"I'm not going to leave you," Bumblebee repeated his promise. "I am _never_ going to leave you behind."

Sam was silent for a minute, his spectral touch almost vibrating with emotion. Like transformers, ghosts couldn't cry, but he was close. "Thank you," he finally whispered.

A car engine started up behind the two of them, making Bumblebee start on his shocks. Sam slipped back into his driver's seat, reforming as the burgundy Porsche pulled up next to Bumblebee. "That's...?" Bumblebee asked his partner.

"Dead End," Sam confirmed, thumbs stroking the grip of Bumblebee's steering wheel like he hadn't touched it in months. Years. "He's okay. We spent a lot of time talking." He leaned forward, grinning wanly. "I think he just needs hugs, as Mom would say. Or Prozac."

"Are you going to come along quietly?" Bumblebee asked the Decepticon.

"Whatever," the Decepticon replied. "I don't have anything better to do, and you'll only chase me if I run."

"See what I mean?" Sam asked rhetorically.

It was so good to feel Sam's weight in his driver's seat again, to have his presence in the back of Bumblebee's processors, that he couldn't even mind having to shepherd an apathetic Decepticon all the way back to Autobot City. "Let's drive," Bumblebee said, perfectly happy now that all was right in his world again.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_This chapter was originally not going to have a ghost train in it. Then it wrote itself in. ;; As did two more Stunticons and thus Sunny and Roddy to handle them. _Originally _it was just going to be Dead End, because I read up on the curse of "Little Bastard," the car James Dean was driving when killed, and thought it would be cool to work a story around that vehicle. Then I realized Dead End was also a Porsche... and when I read on wikipedia that "...he is also vain, and constantly polishing himself. It is speculated by the other Stunticons that, when he dies, he at least wants to leave a nice wreck"... well, doesn't that sound just a _little _bit like the line most commonly associated with James Dean, "Live fast. Die young. Leave a good-looking corpse."?_

_I really have no idea where Sunstreaker's issues came from, but they intrigued me so they got to stay. As for his relationship with Tony, and Carlos' crack about interspecies relationships... I have no idea if that was serious or not, so make of it what you will. Maybe they're just friends and Sunstreaker is Tony's ticket out of Dalby's Falls. Maybe it's more. I didn't ask, and they didn't volunteer the info. Also, I don't know what happened in the Hot Rod versus Breakdown battle. Neither of them were interested in letting me know. I _think _Roddy used "headology" as part of it and it was over quick, but beyond that, no clue. In any case, I hope you all enjoyed the read!_


	7. Mystical Bond

**Mystical Bond**  
by K.Stonham  
released 27th October 2007

Being haunted was a little like being spark-bound.

It wasn't as _immediate_, of course, or as intense, but it was nonetheless sharing his life, his existence, with another person. Their memories were measured out through one another in dribs and drabs, a slow now-and-again exchange of moments, rather than the overwhelming all-at-once exchange that occurred with true spark-binding, but it was similar enough that Bumblebee recognized the sensation, the significance. The emotions weren't the same, but...

_My life seen through yours. Your life seen through mine. All I am, yours. All you are, mine._

It was close enough.

Goldbug would have found the situation hilarious. Goldbug also, he thought, would have loved knowing Sam. The small, quirky being had taught Bumblebee many things, so much more than he ever would have thought possible when he'd first encountered the ignorant, primitive, fragile human species. He wasn't sure what was the most valuable thing he'd learned from Sam: the fact that humans and transformers had the exact same thoughts and feelings? Or perhaps the qualitative difference between knowing that something was water and the experience of feeling that it was _wet_? Or maybe even simply the knowledge that the smaller and weaker a species was, the more determined and dangerous it could be...

* * *

"So, then, he's your pet?" Slingshot asked. 

_That_ sent a ripple of silence spreading through the control room, organic eyes and robotic optics drifting variously toward the Aerialbot, or toward Bumblebee and his partner.

_Do you mind?_ Sam asked silently, looking up at Bumblebee.

Bumblebee shook his head slightly. _He's all yours,_ he replied the same way.

The ghost quirked the ghost of a smile, and vanished.

Even as Slingshot's optics widened, a telekinetic sweep knocked him off his feet, and another TK move kept him floating a few meters above the deck plating of the Moon Base. Bumblebee _felt_ Sam slide into Slingshot's systems, the connection between the two of them stretched to a thin cord of intangible energy while Sam did his work, rendering the other Autobot immobile and terrified of something he couldn't fight.

"Slingshot!" Silverbolt stepped forward, but Ultra Magnus' arm barred his way.

"Let them work this out," the base commander said quietly. "Sam won't permanently damage him."

* * *

The Aerialbot idiot wasn't the biggest asshole Sam had ever encountered (that distinction was generally reserved for Decepticons and once in a while a Lamborghini twin or the various Earth world leaders), but he wasn't too low on the list either at the moment. 

_You know, Slingshot,_ he said directly into the transformer's CPU, running cold, spectral traces along vital circuits and relays, _I'm not Bumblebee's pet, and he's not mine._

_What-- what are you doing?_ the Autobot demanded.

_Making a point,_ Sam answered, examining Slingshot's flight subroutines. _I'm not going to hurt you, but I want you to listen to me. Humans may be small compared to you guys, and we haven't had as long to evolve, but if you keep up the attitude, you're going to end up as persona non grata on our planet as the Decepticons._

_Your kind wouldn't hurt me,_ Slingshot shot back. _You can't!_

_Oh?_ Sam questioned silkily, moving on to study the Aerialbot's anti-gravity propulsors. _Humans may be only organic, but we learn fast. And right now I could reprogram you to cluck like a chicken every time you heard your own name. So a little respect might not be out of place, Slingshot. Or failing that... some manners._

_You wouldn't,_ the transformer said, horrified, not even bothering to ask what a chicken was.

_Size matters not,_ Sam quietly informed Slingshot, quoting from a movie that had been old before even his lifetime. _Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm?_ he asked, quite serious. Slingshot did the functional equivalent of shaking his head. _Hmm. And well you should not._

* * *

When Slingshot was released and fell uncerimoniously to the deck, his four teammates were on him in seconds, checking him over for damage. He sat up slowly, one hand to his head, gears groaning, and looked at Bumblebee, who stood nearby, leaning against a wall, arms crossed. "I... apologize," he said lowly, causing his teammates to stare at him. "To both of you." 

"Slingshot?" Skydive asked, sounding amazed.

Bumblebee nodded softly. "Apology accepted," he replied, and turned back to his workstation, staring unseeing at the display. Sam hummed and buzzed fitfully in the back of his processors, almost drained of energy from his little stunt despite Luna's lesser gravity, fighting the need to recharge. _Sleep,_ Bumblebee told him. _I'll be here._

_Can't... I don't want to lose time,_ Sam pleaded against forces of physics neither of them could control. It always took a long period of unconsciousness for the ghost to regain his energy.

_I'll wake you,_ Bumblebee promised. It had taken a while, but he'd found ways to shorten Sam's recharge periods. He couldn't eliminate them completely, but every little bit helped.

_You swear?_

_I do._

Sam whimpered an imprecation against the inevitable force pulling at him, accompanied by a rush of pained self-hatred, then gave in, mercifully fading into slumber in the back of Bumblebee's processors.

"Bumblebee?" Ultra Magnus asked quietly, laying a hand on his shoulder.

"He's asleep," Bumblebee replied softly, not looking up. "And I don't want to talk to Slingshot until that changes," he told his commanding officer, letting a note of fierceness sharpen his voice.

"Understood," Magnus told him, and kindly left Bumblebee alone.

* * *

_He'd been on the planet for four of its years, searching for any clue as to the AllSpark or Megatron, when he finally found one. One of the Witwicky descendants he hadn't yet investigated--Archibald Witwicky had many, many descendants; humans bred so prolifically!--had placed a pair of his ancestor's glasses for sale on the planetary communications network. Even just a cursory scan of the picture revealed clear Cybertronian imprinting on the lenses' surface, and the pieces fell into place for Bumblebee._

_The AllSpark had landed on Earth. Megatron had found it but luckily been trapped in stasis lock in the polar ice--Captain Witwicky's "frozen ice giant"--before he could retrieve it. But apparently the Captain had managed to activate enough of Megatron's system that the Cube's coordinates, surely the thing highest in Megatron's processing queue, had been burnt into his eyes and glasses. And though Archibald himself had been locked away in an asylum, his glasses had been passed down among his heirs as Bumblebee had hoped._

_He made a tire-screeching U-turn and made for Pasadena, California, where Samuel James Witwicky lived._

_The easy way to obtain the glasses, of course, would have been to use the website's "buy it now" feature and purchase them outright. However, that would necessitate the creation of an account (simple enough), the creation of false currency within the economic system to make good the purchase (an act of dubious morality, but they needed the information those glasses held...), and an address to which the glasses could be shipped. The third point was where Bumblebee failed. Besides, he acknowledged, it might be possible that the information on the glasses was damaged or incomplete... it might be that other artifacts in Samuel's possession would be vital clues as well._

_He needed to get close to the boy and, if possible, earn his trust._

* * *

_He found Samuel's school, and was easily able to identify the boy when he finished his classes, getting into his father's car and excitedly showing off an exam score. Bumblebee followed them as they drove and... oh, how perfect. He rolled into the parking lot as the Witwicky father and son talked with a man who, from his demeanor, Bumblebee assumed was the owner of the small used car business. He actually reminded Bumblebee not a little of a Decepticon named Swindle. _Will you sell me, even though I'm not yours? _he wondered, amused. Not that it mattered. He was determined to leave this lot with the Witwicky boy in his care, and if that meant surreptitiously destroying every other vehicle present to achieve his goal, he would do it._

_Luck was with him and his alternate mode seemed pleasing to the boy, human hands running over his roof. As the lot owner argued with his existence, Samuel--called Sam, apparently--opened his driver's side door and got in. His hands went on Bumblebee's wheel and he rocked back and forth a little in the driver's seat._

_It was strange. He felt like he _fit_, like he was part of Bumblebee... like he was _supposed _to be there._

Feels good, _Bumblebee thought, surprised, just as Sam said the same thing. His processors stuttered at the synchronicity even as Sam wiped clean the Autobot symbol in the center of his steering wheel from the grime that had accumulated over it._

_The lot owner and Sam's father argued over the price and Sam stuck his opinion in, on the matter of Bumblebee's paint. Bumblebee found he was amused again; apparently Sam Witwicky had a smart mouth. But then it was determined by the two adults that Sam couldn't have him, and though the boy was reluctant to accede and relinquish Bumblebee, apparently he felt that he had no choice._

_Bumblebee's processors ran cold and, as the human saying went, he saw red. This was _not _acceptable. He had come for the boy, and he would be leaving with the boy. There were no alternatives. So when hitting the next vehicle the lot owner tried to sell the two wasn't enough, he got annoyed._

Slaggit!

_Using a pitched resonance coil, he blew out the windows of every other vehicle on the lot, rendering himself the only available purchase._

_Needless to say, he got his way, and drove off with the Witwicky boy safely in his interior._

* * *

Sam woke slowly, surfacing from the memory. Almost dreamily he reformed, finding himself in one of the viewing galleries. On the other side of the plas-steel the Earth hung low and full in the lunar sky. It had been weeks, then, at the least; Earth had been only a crescent when he'd had his "chat" with Slingshot. The planet was so bright that all the lights in the gallery had been turned off, leaving only the Earthlight and its reflection on the endless gray pumice of the lunar landscape to provide lighting. It was breathtaking. It was enough. 

A metal hand curled protectively around him and Sam leaned into Bumblebee's touch, grateful. "You are such a bitch," he said, smiling up at his best friend. The memory had woken him. Good memories could do that, they'd found. Positive emotion, warmth to fill up all the empty places that telekinesis stripped away... it worked best when it was one of Bumblebee's memories of him, but sometimes memories of others, of planets and friends and lovers long lost, would do the trick too.

"I was not leaving that lot without you," Bumblebee informed him.

"Best four thousand dollars anyone ever spent," Sam said. He closed his eyes, leaning his head against the thumb that rubbed against his cheek. He was still tired, but not enough so to slip back into weightless dreaming.

Bumblebee laughed softly. "Only two thousand of it was yours," he pointed out.

Sam opened his eyes again, the Earth before his eyes. Along the length of this gallery, over the plas-steel windows, was inscribed a long quote by a long-dead astronomer named Carl Sagan. His gaze caught on the last section, carved letters dark and shadowed, but familiar: "Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity--in all this vastness--there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish this pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

It wasn't always easy, and sometimes Sam could understand all too well why idiots like Slingshot felt the way they did about the human race, but... they were getting better. They were trying. Some days he felt guilty, and some days ashamed, about the species he belonged to and the acts they perpetrated upon themselves and one another and the alien species with whom they shared the Earth. But humans _were_ getting better, and so long as they tried, and strove, and dreamed, the Autobots would not abandon them to the Decepticons and the other predators that followed in their wake. The Autobots had protected his species from their own, Sam knew, but even more, they'd also probably saved humans from themselves, from all the nuclear bombs and atomic winters and World War Threes that had been the secret unspoken fears of his childhood. The older, wiser race had taught humans from their own example, their own mistakes. Day by day, the human race matured, and became more ready to take their next step out into the universe.

"Why you ever wanted to stay with me, I'll never know," he told his partner.

Bumblebee's presence was a gentle warmth even in the carefully moderated temperatures of the Moon Base as he shrugged expressively. "The car picks the driver," he replied, teasing just slightly. "It's a mystical bond between man and machine." And that much was definitely true for the two of them, energy fields that _still_ no one understood fully binding them together almost as much as their reciprocated regard. Almost as much as their friendship, and mutual wonder. "And," Bumblebee added thoughtfully, "even then I knew that you were 'more than meets the eye'."

Sam breathed a laugh. Everyone he'd known while alive was gone, only ghosts now in his and the Autobots' memories. None of them had overstayed their time the way he had. None of them had been invited to haunt someone the way he had. Still, he knew somehow that they'd be waiting for him and Bumblebee whenever the day came that they took that shared journey to the other side. "I love my car," he replied simply, softly, completing their shared memory of the beautiful girl he'd loved more than anything. She'd gone on with her life after his had changed forever, and he'd worked with her children, her grandchildren... her great-great-grandchildren. In a world of human change, only he and the Cybertronians remained a constant.

Still...

When the human race had needed it, really, really needed it, help had come. And when the transformers had been really screwed, a human boy had managed to save the day. Those two facts cemented Sam's faith in a higher power. _As long as we look out for one another, everything is going to be all right._

Sitting in the Earthlight with his best friend, Sam was content with his afterlife.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_I thought I was done with this series. Really I did. Then three prompts pop into my head ("water versus wet," the "Yodaism," and someone calling Sam Bumblebee's pet), and well, it all snowballed downhill from there. Plus the title begged at me, as did the idea of seeing that first meeting from Bumblebee's perspective... I mean, wouldn't you, as a sentient robot, be a little surprised when this human kid sat in you (first human inside you, ever) and you realized that it felt good? So, taking Sam's line and applying it to 'Bee as well. The Carl Sagan quote over the viewing gallery windows came while poking around images of the Earth as taken from space on Wikipedia. Go look up "Pale Blue Dot" for where it comes from. And the whole eBay thing bugged at me until I figured out just why neither the Autobots nor Decepticons could simply buy the glasses from Sam. It's all about the lack of shipping address..._


End file.
